There is a rise in the global economic uncertainty.that is even felt in Southeast Asia. Even a survey of Ernst and Young just revealed that 40 per cent of companies in the region are pessimistic about their profitability, compared to only 30 per cent of companies about six months ago that included 118 Southeast Asian companies across a variety of industries.
The ongoing Eurozone debt crisis and the slackening growth in US has cast a sense of pessimism among Asian companies as well. The problems of the West are seen as a dark cloud on the horizon. Yet at the same time, there is a growing sense that the West no longer matters. China is emerging as the dominant economy and that the United States is becoming irrelevant economically.
What is interesting is that the CONFIDENCE so critical to the economy has now declined and 54 per cent of the region’s respondents reported that they thought the global economy was worsening, up from 42 per cent in their last survey. One clearly gets the “feel” that the United States is in the decline as is the case for Europe. This is fueling the drive to link Southeast Asian economies and markets as a single hub.
Last year, Singapore’s GDP per capita was about $57,000. In 1965, it was about $493. On GDP per capita, it has comfortably surpassed Australia in wealth. Singapore is on the rise to rapidly become the world’s wealthiest country. The government is managed soundly and practically. Unlike the West that is becoming a visible police state where police love to show guns and force, in Singapore it is low-key, and police are plain clothes so you rarely get that sense of a police state as in the USA. The street are flawless and everything is managed as a proper business. Economically, Singapore’s management has been far better that anything seen in the West. It is a worth example that contrasts the worst seen in the economic management of so called democracies that are really republics since it is the politicians who make all the decisions, never the people.
The shift in the Financial Capital of the World is in the air in Asia. They may not understand it lacking the economic data of centuries, but this will be our focus at the Bangkok Conference November 2nd & 3rd. Southeast Asia is emerging as the bright spot is an otherwise darkening global future.
